Posted
by
samzenpuson Thursday March 07, 2013 @06:30AM
from the time-to-sue dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A Court of Appeal judgement released today has ruled in favor of Kim Dotcom and will let him sue the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) alongside New Zealand Police. During the High Court case, it emerged that the GCSB had been illegally spying on Dotcom prior to the raid on his Coatesville mansion, on behalf of the FBI, who now wants the Megaupload millionaire extradited to face trial in the US over copyright infringements."

Apropos of nothing at all, I was fortunate to have a client drive me past Kim Dotcoms mansion in a fashionably distant and hilly area North of Auckland a little while ago. It was, he said with evident disdain, a "rented mansion". I've no idea how true that is.

The main gate over which heavily armed special forces apparently had to pass, is barely a metre high, and surrounded by... no fence at all.

When did we start to allow police forces in Western countries start to behave like militias?

When did we start to allow police forces in Western countries start to behave like militias?

It's been that way for over almost a decade now.

DHS just dropped ~$100 million on a bunch of APCs, school Districts are buying assault weapons for their on-campus police forces and the LAPD has been known to send out swat team members to deal with parking tickets.

The bottom line is: the police have realized that they can practically guarantee they get to go home at the end of the day if they treat every interaction like a military engagement and utilize overwhelming force to suppress their enemy. The fact that innocent people will get murdered in their zeal of officer-safety-at-all-costs doesn't even enter their thought process.

The government has basically ruined their ability and right to prosecute him by illegal and ridiculous behaviour. Is he a bad guy? probably. Does he deserve to have his basic freedoms respected? Ya, just like anyone else.

Like other cases where a person's legal rights are infringed by investigators (and prosecutors), dotcom deserves to go free and the evidence used against him stricken. That's the only way to ensure that the same tactics won't be used again and again against people.

Kim Dotcom is no hero, but the government is definitely the villain of the piece, and their actions have led to Kim Dotcom's credibility (ha!) in this case.

I would prefer if illegal evidence garthering was punished like any other crime, but the evidence garthered could still used. Jail time would be a more powerful deterrent than havibg your evidence thrown out. However, I have no confidence that the guilty cops would receive justice, so perhaps your suggestion works better in practice.

The problem is - who should be punished for gathering the illegally obtained evidence?

The policemen who physically gathered the evidence?The lawyers who signed off on the gathering?The officers who signed off on the gathering?The politicians who pushed for a case to be made?All the policemen who were involved with the case?

It's a tricky situation, because what is to prevent A from getting B to take the possible fall, by telling B to go pick that thing up?

The problem is - who should be punished for gathering the illegally obtained evidence?

The policemen who physically gathered the evidence?The lawyers who signed off on the gathering?The officers who signed off on the gathering?The politicians who pushed for a case to be made?All the policemen who were involved with the case?

Yes. That would be all of them, there are rules, regs, procedures, case law, constitution(in NZ's case), and so on that were all violated. It was such a massive breech of public trust that every person should be charged criminally.

Like other cases where a person's legal rights are infringed by investigators (and prosecutors), dotcom deserves to go free and the evidence used against him stricken. That's the only way to ensure that the same tactics won't be used again and again against people.

If the U.S. Constitution were still in effect, this egregious misconduct would get the perp freed at arraignment, if not cancelling the embarrassment of extradition. L'esprit deLoi of our Constitution is as guidelines for just and effective government, with primacy given toward protecting the citizen from the state.

Like other cases where a person's legal rights are infringed by investigators (and prosecutors), dotcom deserves to go free and the evidence used against him stricken. That's the only way to ensure that the same tactics won't be used again and again against people.

I argue that is not true. Although I believe in the need of due process, the procedure of striking poisoned evidence hasn't amounted to a deterrance of abuse by law enforcement. Something in the process must be revised, preferrably with the aim of building abuse deterrance.

Something like, being it a crime. Evidence striken? No... evidence is evidence. Proof of fact is proof of fact. But the police men that acted illegally ought to go to jail just as well. Illegal is illegal.

The government has gotten smart. In the 60s, they prosecuted Rosa Parks. She was an unassuming woman who was not sitting in the front of the bus, nor in the whites-only section. The civil rights activists picked their case carefully. She was not the first, but she was the last (not counting those which happened while the trial was going on). Why? Because the activists picked the test case. An unassuming woman sitting in the Blacks section in the back of the bus.

school Districts are buying assault weapons for their on-campus police forces

You've got a fucked up country if you have an on-campus police force

The bottom line is: the police have realized that they can practically guarantee they get to go home at the end of the day if they treat every interaction like a military engagement and utilize overwhelming force to suppress their enemy. The fact that innocent people will get murdered in their zeal of officer-safety-at-all-costs doesn't even enter their thought process.

Does it really?

There have been 22 police officers killed in the line of duty in the UK since 2000 Half of those were traffic collisions (accidents or delibete), so I'm not sure how a SWAT team would solve that. That's a 1 in 90,000 chance of dying in the line of duty each year.

New Zealand has 7 deaths (half accidental) since 2000 (1 in 19000)

Canada had 5 deaths in 2012, 4 of which were vehicle related (1 in 13000)

The U.S has had 19 deaths SO FAR THIS YEAR. Last year was about 130, out of 794,000 officers (1 in 6000)

The U.S. is an anomaly, don't lump the western world into your dysfunctional society.

Both the universities I went to had police forces that were just extensions of the local law enforcement. One was for the county sheriff, the other for the city police. I'm not sure whose budget their paycheck came from, but they had the same authority off campus that they had on. They were just rarely found off campus.

Some universities have State Police running the show, which basically means that they have jurisdiction all over the state. They generally call in the local city police and assist if it is more city related, but they have full jurisdiction.

In Texas, there is no such concept of "jurisdiction". Every officer is sworn to the state, so their jurisdiction is the entire state. The university cops are empowered the same as the city cops near them. For practical reasons, you stay near home, but for legal reasons, an El Paso officer currently off duty in Texarkana (About as far apart as you can get in Texas, 800+ miles) has the same legal powers as a local on-duty officer.

It's not the country, but the "overlords" who are FU. Check your country, see if the overlords are the same, or if they are acting the same. Then guess why you are headed in the same direction as we are. If a politician will lie to get the job, what makes you so sure he's going to work for you?

As someone that was involved with a legal case with campus police, I can assure you that United States Universities do in fact have their own police forces. Not only that but they are afforded special treatment in the court system. They not only enforce the ordinances on campus... they write them. Campuses are often HUGE and take up hundreds or thousands of acres, even if the buildings themselves don't. People like to donate land to universities in their wills. Because the campus police can write their own ordinances, they do so at will. This was what my court case was about. The changed a rule the same day I was charged, just so they could charge me... or at least "someone" and I was the unlucky sap. They were trying to prove a point. But I fought it so vigorously (because I was furious) the case wasn't resolved for almost a year and nearly everyone forgot about it. I lost in the end and the Judge thought the whole thing was ridiculous so my fine was almost nothing.

At least some university campuses in Canada have a police detachment, but its more about not having the police come in for the small stuff that university students seem to like to get in trouble for(underage drinking). I doubt they would respond to major incidents.

UMass Amherst has the largest State Police department in Mass. They have all the gear, assault weapons, and helicopters. For the purpose of riot control. UMass Amherst is a city, written into the law as such. They are the single largest armed military force in this state.
Source: Me. Because that's where I'm from.

That should've been, "For the purposes of riot control,..."
And here's the text of the law.
"Section 1. If five or more persons, being armed with clubs or other dangerous weapons, or if ten or more persons, whether armed or not, are unlawfully, riotously or tumultuously assembled in a city or town, the mayor and each of the aldermen of such city, each of the selectmen of such town, every justice of the peace living in any such city or town, any member of the city, town, or state police and the sheriff of

I got the impression that in recent years they were more concerned with protecting foolish students from the full rigour of the criminal justice system than persecuting them.

That's my impression of US campus police, too. I'm sure there are anecdotes that contradict this, but in my experience you really have to fuck up for them to get involved. Campus cops always seemed to me the perfect manifestation of police. Super reasonable and helpful, not interested in hassling people just to satisfy their power trip, but on the scene if actual bad stuff was happening.

The fact that innocent people will get murdered in their zeal of officer-safety-at-all-costs doesn't even enter their thought process.

That's because the consequence of killing a harmless innocent is nil. It is non-existent. Even when the action is targeted, the police get off scott free. It's part of the job, they say, a job hazard. They can't do their jobs if they're busy figuring out who's shooting at them and who's running away. Best thing to do is shoot first and ask questions later.

The bottom line is: the police have realized that they can practically guarantee they get to go home at the end of the day if they treat every interaction like a military engagement and utilize overwhelming force to suppress their enemy.

Commander William Adama: There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.

Use a bit of empiricism to figure it out, you fucking prick. Many departments in the US now allow (and even mandate) that officers have either an AR-15 or full blown M-16 in the trunk of their car. As the anti-gun lobby has been so eager to point out to 2nd Amendment supporters: those are weapons of war meant for killing large volumes of people quickly and efficiently.

Use a bit of empiricism to figure it out, you fucking prick. Many departments in the US now allow (and even mandate) that officers have either an AR-15 or full blown M-16 in the trunk of their car. As the anti-gun lobby has been so eager to point out to 2nd Amendment supporters: those are weapons of war meant for killing large volumes of people quickly and efficiently.

And of course that has nothing to do with the fact that so many US civilians also have AR-15s and that criminals therefore have access to these and more powerful weapons?

I know here on slashdot the gun-fans think that the police/military shouldn't have weapons that the ordinary citizen can't, but presumably you'd all still accept that they should have at least equivalent firepower?

Now that he's been living there for long enough, they can no longer keep him from buying the mansion... Except by making sure he's got no access to his money.

Speaking of his money, I'm glad the copyright lobbies (through their bought-and-paid-for government proxies) are finally picking on someone with enough money to defend himself. The expenses of a lawsuit aren't likely to ruin Mr. Dotcom's life the way they would the average filesharer's. Whether he's liked or not, I am hoping he wins because the precedent of a victory will help reverse some of the obsessive copyright-related madness we keep seeing from an industry that refuses to cope with the Information

East and west isn't a definition of location, it's a definition on government, society, and ways of social planning and thinking. There are distinct social and economic differences between the way policing works for example in Japan compared to Canada. And even regionally, just like here in the west from Canada to the US. But within the 'west' things are traditionally done all in the same way. If you leave a job in government, military, politics, or policing in say the US or Canada, and head to Europe y

Why not distinct between 1st, 2nd and 3rd world ?Sure the cold war has been over for a while but in this case it seems less confusing to refer to 1st world nations instead of western ones when you include New Zealand.

But even thats not quite fitting, since "western countries" seems to be too general. Why not refer to (first world) anglophone countries here ?

When I see "Anglophone", I think U.S, Australia, New Zealand, and a few tiny British colonies (Pitcairn, Falklands, St Helena, etc)When I see "Western", I tend to think of the above, plus EU and IsraelWhen I see "Eastern", I tend to think of China, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, etc.

When it comes to First World, I'd include those "Western", but also places like Japan, (South) Korea, Singapore, etc. Third world includes Rwanda, Afghanistan, Texas, Pakistan, Columbia.

I know what you are saying, but you may want to reconsider calling New Zealand "western", at least out of respect for the old sailors and explorers that helped map the globe through long travels and considerable danger.

No, I'm rejecting the notion that "western" can be used as a synonym of "democratic", "civilized" or just "not a police state" because those things have nothing to do with geographical or cultural proximity with the USA (or Europe).

We adopted a convention of two hemispheres, Eastern and Western divided by the Prime Meridian. But that is not why the OP was calling NZ western. He/she did it because it has a similar culture to the US, as if that makes it a better country in terms of human rights. And that is quite definitely annoying.

But that is not why the OP was calling NZ western. He/she did it because it has a similar culture to the US, as if that makes it a better country in terms of human rights.

There was a time when it did mean that. Ask your grandparents or your oldest living relative about that, maybe they will be old enough to remember. It was definitely a long time ago. Now we in the "Western nations" do the very same things we used to look down on "Communist" countries for doing. That includes things like imprisonment without trial, secret FISA courts, summary executions of citizens, etc.

I see your point, and find it ridiculous and pointless. Why would I pay respects to long dead explorers?

I find much more value in being understood by others then by fighting to redefine a word.
But if thats what you want to do, then carry on tilting at windmills.

I appreciate the succinct, eloquent manner in which you stated that.

I may just quote you on it (with attribution of course) the next time discussion degrades into another one of these weak "but languages evolve over time" bullshit episodes.

Of course, "languages evolve over time" is almost always code for "I can't be bothered to learn to do things correctly, besides everyone is a winner and no one is ever wrong or mistaken if they just weasel out of admitting it". Perhaps that phrase has been used leg

It should only *really* matter if it represents a significant loss of actual income. Something that has yet to be shown to be true, but I believe has shown false in a number of studies."IP" is such a nebulous concept to begin with, but thanks to Hollywood and the Big Media lobby, the penalties for violating their rules are far far in excess of what is justified.

when was it ever not like that ? It all depends on who you point your middle finger at in what they, or you and i would call demo cracy... something i hear is invented by george washington according to some, which explains why it's a bit crooked then i suppose...

Doesn't this make the appeal against the extradition stronger? Even given the minimal amount of evidence required to pass an extradition hearing doesn't the fact that this evidence is declared to have been obtained illegally render that evidence unusable?

I'd like to say that unlike most of you (most of you who post, anyway), I am, in a broad brush "against" mega. The test of copyright infringement in all countries in not a simple yes/no, but rather depends on things like intent, amount of material involved, for profitness, etc. And, when put against such tests, it is clear that megaupload's entire business model was as a facilitator of copyright infringing materials. I don't think there's any legitimate claim for him to be a "common carrier" as an impartial ISP. I agree with the takedown of his site and the seizure of his ill-gotten gains.

HOWEVER

If you read the wiki page on mega, specifically the "basis of indictment" bullet points, what strikes me is this: the exact same list can easily be levied against youtube, which I content is also a business, like megaupload, fundamentally built upon copyright infringement. YouTube is slightly more clever in that they attract non-infringing users to better mask their infringing activities, but still fundamentally the vast bulk of youtube advertising dollars come from showing copyright infringing content. Like megaupload, it has as kiddy-pron filter that works and yet while the same filter could be trivially tweaked or built upon to block at least a good portion of blatantly infringing content, it is not. Furthermore, both youtube and mega technically claim to be DMCA-takedown compliant, but both make legitimate rightsholders go through the maximal numbers of hoops to submit claims AND have trivial mechanisms for replacement of taken-down content (in mega's case, the 'link' system, in youtube's case, users just create another logon and re-upload).

So, if there's one thing REALLY wrong with this case, it's not relatively small prosecutorial oversteps in going after mega. rather, it's the unequalness where mega was procecuted but youtube allows to steam on. do a youtube search for 'full movie' to see how bad it is. we all know that we can find more or less whatever we want on youtube, plus or minus a few recent items from popular/current shows where the rightsholders actively police youtube (like the latest family guy episodes).

in all cases, it is the creators of content, the very people that we should protect the most, that get screwed.

YouTube's also spent a lot of time making itself legal and started out with a legitimate premise (not a "We're legal nudge-nudge wink-wink" premise, but an entirely legitimate concept from the get-go - a place to share home movies. Things like the ten minute maximum length of each video, considerably shorter than 90% of TV shows and 100% of movies helped demonstrate that.)

YouTube went to the content industry and worked with them on everything from implementing filters to block identifiable unauthorized content to providing them with royalties should they prefer that over DMCA takedowns.

I just don't see any of that in the MU case. MU was no different from the other major "Upload up to a gigabyte and then distribute a link that anyone can use to access the same content" services. Even their DMCA compliance system was a joke, focussing on links to content (where an infinite number of links pointed to the same file) rather than on content.

Was MU intended to be a facilitator of unauthorized material? I can't answer that, but I know YouTube never intended itself to be, didn't want to be, and took pro-active steps to deal with that situation. That's a major difference in and of itself.

Even their DMCA compliance system was a joke, focussing on links to content (where an infinite number of links pointed to the same file) rather than on content.

Focusing on the links is exactly how a DMCA compliance system is supposed to work.

Imagine two people upload the same content. One for legitimate reasons and keeps their link private, the other for illegitimate reasons and makes their link public. A DMCA complaint is filed against the public link. Which do you do...1) Disable the public link.2) Remove the content from both the legitimate and illegitimate user.

Don't forget that governments, especially the U.S. government, are actively trying to bring down Google. They can't control Google, because Google doesn't really do too many things wrong, so they're trying to make the little infractions they occasionally do sound very, very bad.

I don't like Google very much, but they are a wildcard in the entrenched interests' game of governance, and hence they are counted as a threat.

Except their automatic filter is ridiculously bad for filtering out basically anything except for recent content by top label bands and recent TV shows, in both cases based on audio samples. You can watch pretty much every copyrighted documentary ever made, get tens of thousands of full length movies, and much more with trivial searches, most of which have been up for a long time and are never taken down. It is only the most obvious of obvious stuff that gets taken down, and even that gets back up in ano

Here's where your argument falls apart. By the logic you're using, if a company makes money on copyright infringement they should be stopped. What about all the PCs and Macs used to pirate movies, rip songs, etc? One can argue early versions of iTunes and Windows Media Player/encoder were used to pirate content. What about the MP3 codecs? How many people used them for legitimate purposes early on? P2P technology is another example. Blizzard distributes patches using P2P, but most of it's use is to pi

The unfortunate fact is that "the law" goes after those who aren't bringing in money to compensate for their breaking of law, like GoogleTube.

Not to get off-topic, but what I fail to understand is how the "infringer" who downloads stuff to see/listen to/use/experiment with before purchasing it and recommending it to friends is any different. They are buying; you suing them and landing them in jail and/or removing all of the money from their dispensable cash flow is halting your p

in all cases, it is the creators of content, the very people that we should protect the most, that get screwed.

Well no. In all cases, it is The People, the people that we should protect equally, that get screwed. If you're the little guy, you can't afford to wage war over "intellectual property". These laws are there to benefit corporations.

The first copyright law of which I'm aware stated "all books passing through this port must be submitted for copying", not "thou shalt not make copies". That kind of copyright was about increasing human knowledge. The kind we have now is about rent-seeking.

what strikes me is this: the exact same list can easily be levied against youtube, which I content is also a business, like megaupload, fundamentally built upon copyright infringement. YouTube is slightly more clever in that they attract non-infringing users to better mask their infringing activities, but still fundamentally the vast bulk of youtube advertising dollars come from showing copyright infringing content.

The vast majority of the "copyright infringing material" you see on YouTube is put there by

a) posting an entire discovery channel documentary and then claiming that it is "fair use" because of fair use's education provision, though anybody with half a brain could see that such a claim does not stand up.b) posting a whole movie and then claiming "fair use" under god knows what theory.c) some guy claiming "fair use" because he used a commercial piece of music as the background for his something else.

I have been following this since it started with eyebrows rising at every new development.
That KDC should be able to sue the government and the police is the right decision. However, the real bad guys here are the USA / FBI / MIAFIAA who bullied the NZ Government into acting in this unjust manner. The whole thing was a shake-down, plain and simple.
Shame on the NZ government for allowing themselves to be bullied - all they can see is the Free-Trade-Agreement carrot being dangled, always out of reach... "